Linux Virtual Desktop: Tech Preview is Now Available for Evaluation

Last August we announced the Tech Preview of Linux Virtual Desktop. The response we received was overwhelmingly positive and everyone was eager to test it. Now, Citrix is excited to announce that the Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview is available for download!

The Linux Virtual Desktop Tech Preview is available for all Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop customers under active Subscription Advantage or Software Maintenance and all Citrix Partners.

Citrix has been a pioneer over the last 25 years, leading the Windows App and Desktop delivery with XenApp and XenDesktop. In the current era of app proliferation, the need for secure, mobile, and high-performance delivery of Linux apps and desktop has become ever more so important. Customers consider Citrix as a natural choice for supporting virtualization of Linux apps and desktop in their IT strategy. For some, Linux Virtual Desktop is a natural extension of their XenApp and XenDesktop infrastructure to include Linux, and for others it is their first step towards virtualization.

Many of the requirements around Linux applications relate to mission-critical research and development work that includes chip design, high-performance computing projects, numerical computation done in financial and scientific modeling, big data analysis and engineering tools. In addition, Citrix customers are asking for virtual desktop support for specialized applications built exclusively for Linux, particularly in the oil and gas industry, manufacturing, digital media, and entertainment industries. These customers need to offer secure, global access to employees using a wide variety of mobile and desktop devices, while maintain centralized control of business-critical intellectual property.

You can now add Linux Virtual Desktop in your XenApp/XenDesktop 7.5 or 7.6 test environment containing existing components such as StoreFront, Broker, Studio and Director. Once the Linux machine has been joined to the domain using standard Active Directory (AD) binding tools like Winbind and Quest you just need to install the RPM package and setup the Desktop Catalog and Desktop Groups as you would with a pure Windows environment.

Linux Virtual Desktop works with all the supported Hypervisors for XenDesktop—XenServer, Hyper-V, or vSphere. In fact Citrix has recently released XenServer 6.5, which adds support for RHEL and SLES templates for Linux.

You can now use applications like Libreoffice, Firefox, Eclipse, OpenOffice, Gimp etc. inside the Linux Virtual Desktop along side the Microsoft Windows applications all delivered using Citrix Receiver on your device.

Thanks again for your response on our invite for tech preview. We are looking forward to your feedback with more to come in future!

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